Dr. Diane H. Sonnenwald, a faculty member at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science (SILS) since 1995, has been promoted to associate professor with tenure.

Sonnenwald recently won the Association for Library and Information Science Education’s (ALISE) 2001 Methodology Paper Award with SILS Professor Dr. Barbara Wildemuth. Sonnenwald has also received a UNC Junior Faculty Research Award.

Before joining SILS, Sonnenwald worked at Bell Labs and Bell Communications Research, and was a National Science Foundation (NSF) and NATO postdoctoral fellow at Risø Danish National Laboratories in Roskilde, Denmark. She earned her Ph.D. in communication, information and library studies at Rutgers University, received her master’s in computer science from Montclair State University in New Jersey, and her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and German from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa.

“Diane’s research efforts, especially in the area of collaboration, are exemplary,” noted SILS Dean Joanne Gard Marshall. “She has shown a great ability to forge partnerships inside and outside the university. Her promotion is indeed very well deserved.”

Sonnenwald is currently involved in projects such as the NSF’s Science and Technology Center for Environmentally Responsible Solvents and Processes where she is the coordinator of collaborative efforts. She is also collaborating with computer scientists, designing and evaluating a collaborative virtual reality environment for the nanoManipulator, an improved, natural interface to scanned-probe microscopes.